twenty-something. girly girl. teacher. puppy-enthusiast.

Monthly Archives: December 2014

Don’t you love how I started out with a blog for blog purposes and now all I use it for is a running record of the books I’ve read? Yeah, me too… Sigh. If only there was more time to actually have fun with it and write for writing’s sake.

Anyway, it has been a while since I have added to the list so here we go:

55 – Chaplin & Company by Mave Fellowes

I wanted so much to love this book, and I want so much to say great things about it. The unfortunate thing is I can’t do either. I didn’t hate it or dislike it terribly… it just didn’t sweep me up in the story like the author so obviously wanted it to. It was artistically written but in a gentle way, not something that was difficult to follow. The main character, Odeline, is somewhat of a hipster in her own way. She’s a mime who takes her art very seriously, and thinks herself to be above pretty much everyone she meets. Over time she learns that you can’t do everything on your own, and she forges some interesting relationships. I think I like her name more than the story though, and I really was stuck on this book for quite some time.

56 – The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

Reading this book was a really wonderful and strange experience. I think I may have actually read this book before, several years ago, but I really can’t remember for sure. The story was so incredibly familiar to me in a way that I felt like I was having deja vu through the whole book – and yet I could not remember or predict any events in the book I hadn’t read yet, so I wasn’t convinced that I had indeed read it once.

Regardless of that, I loved the story. Magical realism at its finest, the story takes place in a small town in New England over many generations. Each chapter you get a story about a different character, and it’s lovely to see how the family trees grow and intertwine in the book. One common thread of the novel is this special garden, which no matter what is planted in it, will come up red. I highly recommend this book!

57 – Tales from the Crib by Jennifer Coburn

Fluffy literature here. A man asks his wife for a divorce on the very same night she is about to tell him that she is pregnant with his child. They decide to continue to live together in order to raise the baby, but pretty much lead completely separate lives. Of course with certain plot twists, things don’t always stay that way… I think it’s kind of a predictable story when it all comes down to it. I enjoyed it though.

58 – The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett

A story about various races of people who live in a carpet, experiencing various natural phenomena such as the vacuum, falling ash, food particles, and the harvesting of varnish off of furniture legs. I will admit that it was hard for me to get into the book because I didn’t really understand what the hell was going on at first, since everything had such different and creative names. However, the work was definitely worth it! Fun, whimsical, and hilarious, this book definitely kept me entertained. It had drawings too, which is always a nice surprise.

59 – The Story of Awkward by R.K. Ryals

I think I downloaded this book because of the cover illustration and a review that said this author was similar in style to Rainbow Rowell. However, it is young adult fiction and you can tell at times, because it feels somewhat juvenile. I enjoyed the book but the second half much moreso than the first half… maybe it was just slow to really grab me. It is definitely a fairy tale, which I guess I didn’t realize when I started reading it as I was expecting something fiction but not quite so out there and made up. This is where I shrug and say I guess I haven’t made up my mind on whether or not I think you should read the book…